Track your MF Investments using Fund Fact Sheet

It’s easy to get lost (and confused) with information overload about mutual funds that is freely available in the Internet, especially for new investors who simply may not know where to start. Many investors choose to passively trust their funds to a financial advisor. While advisors are useful and often irreplaceable partners in your financial journey, it is preferable that investors have at least a modicum of knowledge about their own investments — and that doesn’t necessarily involve poring over massive and mind-boggling spread-sheets.

Investing in Mutual Funds is just the first step. Once you have invested, you need to keep track of the actual performance. Knowing the performance your investment is important to decide whether to stay invested (and even to put in additional money) Not that you need to fret over the scheme performance on a daily basis in cases of investment horizons of more than a year, but keeping a check and being aware of the progress of your investment is a good practice. After all, everything from your car to your body needs to undergo periodic health check-ups.

A Track your MF Investments using Fund Fact Sheet.. helps the investors to be aware and be up to date on the key facts of their fund. Through simple formatting and a focus on easily-digestible data, these little nuggets of knowledge are a perfect starting point for the uninformed investor.

So, what is a Track your MF Investments using Fund Fact Sheet..?

A Track your MF Investments using Fund Fact Sheet.. is a basic one-page document that gives an overview of a mutual fund scheme with special emphasis on disclosure of scheme performance and portfolio and is published every month by each mutual fund. It is like a report card that indicates the health of the scheme.

It's a great starting point when one is evaluating a mutual fund scheme before investment. For potential investors, this is a necessary and easy document to read before investing. And it is very handy for those who have already invested, to keep track of their fund’s performance.

A fact sheet typically provides the following information:

Key Information about the Scheme:

Scheme Name

Investment Objective

Type of Scheme

Name of the Fund Manager and his experience

Date of initial allotment post NFO

Average AUM

Latest AUM as on factsheet date

Latest NAV per unit

Load information

Benchmark

Expense Ratio

TER - Regular Plan & Direct Plan

Dividend History

Portfolio Data

Investment in securities

Allocation by sector for equities

Allocation – Asset as well as rating-class for debt

Quantitative/ Volatility Measures

Standard Deviation for equity fund

Beta for equity fund

Sharpe Ratio for equity fund

Portfolio turnover for equity fund

Modified Duration for debt fund

Average maturity for debt fund

Portfolio Yield

Tracking Error (in case of passive Index fund/EF)

Fund Performance/ Returns

Reflect Returns for both liquid and non-liquid funds

SIP Returns

The portfolio depicts how the money that you invested in a scheme has been deployed in various securities.

The performance of the scheme vis-à-vis the Benchmark — as depicted by (some of the terms that you came across earlier) CAGR, Beta, Standard Deviation & Sharpe ratio.

The size and investment details of the scheme.

Total Expense Ratio (TER): Before you invest in a fund, you need to analyze what TER it comes with. Good returns can be easily obliterated by high TER.

Risk assessment: The fact sheet will show how risky a fund is. Depending on your age and other holdings, a fund may be too risky or too income-focused for you.

Returns: The fact sheet will show the fund’s results over the past one year/three year/ five years/since inception etc. This is crucial to know before you buy a fund, as it gives a snapshot of the fund’s history and current trajectory.

You can find the fact sheet on the mutual fund’s website. You can also call and request a copy to be mailed to you.

Why should you read the Fact Sheet?

The fact sheets are made to be read by the average investor, so you don’t need a wealth of investment or financial knowledge to understand what you’re looking at. The fact sheet concisely explains the pros and cons of that particular mutual fund scheme. It is broken down into simple to understand verbiage and charts that can often be reviewed at a glance.

If you’re choosing an investment, you should take the time to read about it carefully. That was often a tall order before fact sheets became the norm, but these days it’s easy for even the most ignorant investor to stay informed. Much of that simplicity comes from easily understood language and carefully-constructed formatting.

So what if you’ve read the fact sheet and feel confident in your decision to purchase? Don’t jump the gun just yet.

There is also a mutual fund Scheme Information Document (SID), which contains more detailed information about the fact sheet. Anyone deciding to invest in a mutual fund scheme should read its SID before investing. This is where an advisor can come in handy. While any investor may be able to understand the basic facts from a Track your MF Investments using Fund Fact Sheet.., an advisor can help you dig into a SID in order to feel truly confident about your investment.

The Bottom Line

You don’t have to be a market whiz to stay on top of how your mutual funds are doing. While there’s always a time and place to seek professional guidance, anyone seeking to make investing a part of their lives needs to begin learning somewhere. A Track your MF Investments using Fund Fact Sheet.. is a great place to start. And you should periodically refer to this document to know how well your investments are doing.